National growth usually comes from local growth, so it is encouraging to see the huge growth in the Finn fleet in Catalonia, a region of north-eastern Spain. Three years ago there was just one Finn, now there are 14 with several more on the way, ranging from Juniors to Super Legends.

Five years ago the Finn class carried out an extensive survey of its top sailors to accumulate data regarding their weight, height and the age they started sailing the Finn, to try and build a picture of the fleet and to examine how these factors changed over the years.

The 2000 Finn Olympic Silver medallist, Luca Devoti, has had an enormous influence on Finn class development over the past 20 years both through building and selling Finns at Devoti Sailing Ltd through to coaching top sailors to many successes. Now his energies are being devoted to sailors at the Dinghy Academy in Valencia. He is also working in the background with the latest Finn Class development programme, the FINNTEAM, a multi-national team of Finn sailors launched in September 2015 to provide coaching, training, logistics and funding opportunities to a group of young guys with Olympic dreams.